Does sunspot activity cause disagreements in the soyabean futures market? According to a Feb. 2021 paper in the journal Economic Modelling, the answer is :
[…] theoretically, the information of sunspots causes disagreement in the soybeans futures market mainly by three channels: gradual information flow, limited attention, and heterogeneous priors.
The new study, from Mr. Hanjie Wang , Jun.-Prof. Dr. Jan-Henning Feil and Prof. Xiaohua Yu Ph.D. at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany, examined the implications of ‘Disagreement Theory’ (Hong, Stein, 2007) with regard to soya pricing.
[…] to analyze investors’ behaviors given the complicated information of sunspots. Theoretically, disagreements could change market price trends and volatilities. Disagreement on the information of sunspots would shape investors’ behavior.
The empirical results of the study highlight the effect of sunspots information on the volatility of soybeans future price.
Based on the disagreement theory, the underlying mechanism of this phenomenon is that the disagreements exist on the information of sunspot activity among investors of the soybeans futures market. When the sunspots are in a normal status, the weather would be mild for soybean production, and the disagreement on the effects would be small. When the sunspots activities are in an extreme status, either extremely low or extremely high, the disagreement would be high as well.
See : Disagreement on sunspots and soybeans futures price Economic Modelling, Volume 95, February 2021, Pages 385-393. A full (draft) copy of which may be found here
BONUS:
Today’s Soya Beans Futures and options
Today’s Predicted Sunspot Number and Radio Flux
Research research by Martin Gardiner